


red eyes, blurred gaze (you look like hell today)

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Bubbles (Homestuck), Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Melancholy, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26174272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: The thing about the dreambubbles that you've never really gotten used to, is how fucking vast they are. There's so many versions of all your friends in all of them, so many different ways you could have gone. And that your friends could have gone. Different ways you could have grown up - and different ways you could have died.
Relationships: Eridan Ampora & Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara & Karkat Vantas, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sollux Captor/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	red eyes, blurred gaze (you look like hell today)

**Author's Note:**

> Dreambubbles: (August 25-31) Whether just visiting in dreams or one of those many dead Karkats, there’s plenty of room in the dream bubbles for a mutant and clown to meet up.

The thing about the dreambubbles that you've never really gotten used to, is how fucking vast they are. There's so many versions of all your friends in all of them, so many different ways you could have gone. And that your friends could have gone. Different ways you could have grown up - and different ways you could have died.

Personally, you'd managed to die a Heroic fucking death by diving to save Eridan from that _thing_ that Jack had turned into when he put on the royal ring, after you'd already died once on your Quest Cocoon. Yeah, Eridan had gone to find him and bring him back but you couldn't let your friends die. Not any more of them, anyway. You'd lost enough. You'd known what it is to be lose people you love enough already. That's how you'd wound up in the dreambubbles like you had, white-eyed and disgustingly corpsey. Nothing you can do about it now, and you don't really regret it either. 

It is what it is, and you are the kinda troll you are. After getting off your Quest Cocoon, you'd found yourself being a lot more accepting about a lot of fucking things. About yourself, about how you think about other trolls, about how other trolls are in general. You're fucked up. But all of you were fucked up in one way or another, just by living in the planet and the culture you'd lived in. There'd been no way to think that the way things were could be any fucking better. 

Then you'd joined Sgrub.

And things had rapidly gone to shit, yeah. That was very fucking true. But from talking to other yous and other versions of your friends, things just kinda happened that way no matter what choices people made. The Game happened. You fought the Black King, the meteors fell, you entered the Medium, etc, etc, et fucking cetera. Things fell apart. Your friends died. You died. There was a whole lot of fucking dying, that's what you're getting at here. You'd met the humans, and trolled them, watched them, and just generally fucked with them. Sometimes you'd _literally_ fucked with them. You don't know what the fuck is wrong with the versions of you that have done so.

In your own timeline, you'd gotten pretty fucking close to John, close enough to break down that stupid fucking human barrier of bluh bluh bluh _I'm not a homosexual_. Whatever the fuck a homosexual actually fucking is. You've met Karkats who got close to Jade and Dave more than once, but Rose never seemed to really mesh with you properly. Personally you think it's because her brand of brain fuckery is just something you're not willing to let her try on your thinkpan, and she can't stand not being able to. It's whatever. It's really not that big a deal. It doesn't mean you don't like her; you sure as fuck _respect_ her.

Besides, girls seem a lot more to her taste - although you've met at least one Rose that hooked up black with Eridan. Somehow, even though he's such a pitiable fucker.

You miss your quadrants. Settling solidly into black with Sollux and taking over Eridan's fucking mockery of a moirallegiance from Feferi, really getting settled in pale with the fucking fish had changed your life for the better. Until your Session ended, because it was a dead fucking end. You aren't the route that leads to your group winning the Game, and you know it's because you're a fucking failure as a leader, but it is what it fucking is.

So here you are, at loose ends. Dead, and without meaning.

You climb to the top of some hill, some meaningless heap of rock lying in the dreambubbles. What else can you do? There's not much else to do, except move through the dreambubbles and talk to people, and you haven't seen anyone else for a very long time. That this is soon to change, you didn't realise until you moved your gaze to the flat plain that cuts the horizon. You spot a standing figure garbed in purple and you slide down the loose rock and mud of the hill you'd only just surmounted. 

"Hey!" Your feet slip and slide as you scramble her way down to the flat ground underneath the hill and you wave your grasper-fronds to catch the figure's attention. You think that the purple-hooded figure freezes for a moment, in what emotion you couldn't say but the way your heel slips out from under you, it doesn't give you much of a chance to scrutinise further. "HEY!"

The figure seemed at first as though it was going to disappear, but then it turned.

Slip-sliding down the slope, you almost run into its arms. You're greeted by the smell of sopor and something sharp, while you look up at a painted face you haven't seen for - _shit_ \- for far too fucking long. You can't help yourself from breaking into a grin, delighted and shocked.

"Gamzee! You _motherfucker_ , where the fuck have you _been?!_ " you yelp with pleasure, grabbing at Gamzee's upper arms to hold him in place as you look up into his face. Gamzee...you know, he's your friend. Your best friend, or at least he'd told you that you were his. You didn't know where he'd gone. He'd...disappeared. After things had started to go down the loadgaper. Your grip loosens a little, as you look up into his face and notice a sort of ancient, immeasurable grief. "Gamzee?"

"Karkat," he breathes out, like it hurts him to do so. His graspers come up to grasp your fronds with the unmovable grip of his hands. Holding you both together, graspers looked both just above the hinges of your grasping limbs. Gazing into each other's eyes. Something in your pusher does a lazy flip, some grubhood remembrance as though you'd forgotten what you were really meant to. Where you should have ended up. "Oh, _Karbro_ , my most incandescent _invertebrother_ -"

"Gamzee, you're hurting me," you say tightly as his fingers tighten around your upper arms. His eyes are mad, swirling orange to red. He's wearing some stupid kind of hat, some hood, something that reminds you somehow of the designs that the Strider human had drawn repetitively through page after page of cellulose sheeting. 

"I miss you so," he murmurs, dipping down to whisper into your auricular clot. A shiver races down the split bones of your support column, and you don't know what he is referring to. Or what he could possibly mean but somehow, you can't find the strength to pull yourself away. How could you drag yourself away from the glitter of his oculars, the sharp-musky scent of the clown. "Oh, _Karkat_..."

He holds you so for a long moment longer, and presses his cheek against yours. Rubs up along you longingly, the same way Eridan does. Soft and pale, smelling like burnt sugar, like rage. You can't bring yourself to pull away. You can feel the tug of bonds not quite meeting pulling at you, the Blood thing dragging at your senses. Sometimes you wish you'd never fucking done it.

"Goodbye," he murmurs, and drops you where he stands. You fall despite your best efforts otherwise, splay-kneed and weak on the ground. You can't look up for a moment, your hands gripping the sands and pebbles as you drag breath after breath into your aeration sacks. You're on your knees, your fronds in the sands as you hear the _crunch crunch crunch_ of someone walking away from you.

Of Gamzee walking away from you.

For some reason, it destroys you. Flinging your head up, you can't see him for a moment. Your sightnuggets are wet and streaming, teary. You can't see a fucking thing. Somewhere in the middle of the horizon, you think you see a blur of purple.

"Gamzee!"

The figure doesn't turn back.

"GAMZEE!"

He doesn't turn back, and you stay where you are. Crouched on the sands.

Knowing you've lost something, and not knowing what you've lost.


End file.
